Joel Spolsky once called it "the single worst strategic mistake that any software company can make", and not for nothing:

"When you throw away code and start from scratch, you are throwing away all that knowledge. All those collected bug fixes. Years of programming work."

Even twenty years into my career, despite understanding, both logically and from experience that a rewrite is a high-risk move with limited chance of success– I am still often tempted.

Coding assistants are making it more tantalizing than ever, and maybe, just maybe, even attainable.